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Wednesday, September 30, 2015

You know how some wise person said all that people care about a wedding are the pictures.. (And the getting married. But that comes second really!)The hassle about picking the right location, theme or not theme, if theme then choose decoration.. (oh wait, my writing sounds like code now. That is definitely not a good sign. Should. write. more. often), from picking the right saree/outfit to choosing the matching mojari (aka sherwani sandals) - every step of the process is simply a coin dropped into the bucket of "the pictures should be good" and what will my Instagram followers think".

Knowing this on some level, I figured that what really mattered in the long run was finding the right photographer and finding the right clothes.

First the clothes.I
had about 2 weeks to shop. I wanted to be there for the shopping, and
one might say I brought it upon myself.... but the two sarees I let
someone else pick were such utter disasters that if I didn't want to
look like a cross between Godzilla and Christmas lights, I better pick
my clothes myself! The downside to that was walking up and down the
streets of T.Nagar trying to find good sarees.Apparently, the minute you breathe the words "wedding" or "bride" people see you like this:

Plus,
saree shopping required a bunch of tricky constraints to be met. You
want a good silk material and potentially some sequin work or whatever,
but not so much that it would be unwearable in the Tamil Nadu heat. But
then again, it should meet the grandeur scale expectations, which in
many people's minds translates to social status - so if you wore
something a tad simpler they would think you were begging in the streets
of Dharavi or something. With my natural instincts primed to pick
sarees that would go well in board rooms of conservative East Coast
banks, it was more than an ordeal for me narrowing the right one. And
what with inadvertently mentioning the word "wedding" in the stores, the
store guy would insist I try on each saree I even vaguely considered. But
that's not it.I
don't know which bride had the brilliant idea of color-coordinating
clothes with the groom. (Of course, it was the bride's idea, however
much the nerd-looking-sarcasm-spewing-feminist-inside-me complains!) But
that has spawned off a whole other set of shopping difficulties. Love a
purple saree? No, can't do- a purple sherwani would look like the groom
came straight from Bombay circus. Found a beautiful bottle green? But
that doesn't go with the rest of the theme. And then there were the
traditional no-nos of white or black, apparently Indians like the gray
areas a lot more (trying so hard not to make an India-bashing joke here).So finally after spending endless hours in endless stores and clogging practically all of the T-mobile international data bandwidth with saree pictures, I had a good mind to call it all off and walk in with a T-shirt and good ole denims. Ha, I wish...With
all that effort going in, one would think I would have escaped the
Bridezilla fate and come out stunning on D-Day. I say it again "Ha, I wish".